"My son was dead, and is alive again; was lost, and is found."
-Luke 15:32

"And is dead. Again."
-phillip low

NATIONAL PRAISE FOR PHILLIP LOW

"...the guy gives good aural."
-Glen Weldon, Washington City Paper

"...a polished, charismatic performer..."
-Robert Trussell, Kansas City Star

"...dark and passionate...thought-provoking theater..."
-Daniel Gerzina, Time Out Chicago

"...has the kind of voice one could listen to almost indefinitely."
-Jay Harvey, Indianapolis Star

PRAISE FOR "FEAR AND TREMBLING"

"The imagery of the poetic presentation is religious, sexual, and technological mysticism...thought-provoking, entertaining, and somewhat reminiscent of the beat poets and the passion of Hunter S. Thompson...if you wish to be protected from the realities of the world around you, this show will shatter your illusions."
-Rabid_Reviewer, KC Stage

"He has a very poetic sense to his writing: he works easily with imagery, patterns and symbols. He creates his own myths, draws up new worlds with new rules and sets his characters loose in them to find out who they are. Sometimes horrifying, sometimes tragic, sometimes even darkly beautiful, his stories run the gamut of emotion and consequence."
-kellyluck, KC Stage

"I hate reality, but I love quality."
-audience member

"I didn't understand a fucking word of it."
-Tim Mooney, solo performer

WHAT'S THIS ABOUT?

Strange beasts. Bleeding statues. Songs of death. Explore the hidden worlds beneath Minneapolis in these twisted tales from founding Rockstar Storyteller phillip low.

WARNING: This show consists primarily of tales of urban fantasy and horror, and consequently contains some graphic material, including descriptions of rape and torture. Seriously.

No set. No props. No costumes, characters, or contrivances. phil returns to doing what he does best -- slamming whiskey and creeping you the fuck out. In high school, he did that for free.

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Cast + crew

phillip andrew bennett low
Role: writer/performer

phillip andrew bennett low is a Chinese-American playwright and poet, storyteller and mime, theatre critic and libertarian activist. His performances have won acclaim at such varied venues as the Minnesota Renaissance Festival, Spirit in the House, FoolFest, and the Chicago, DC, Indianapolis, Iowa, and Kansas City Fringe Festivals -- even as far as Melbourne, Australia. At the 2007 Minnesota Fringe, his hit one-man show Descendant of Dragons was the bestselling show in its venue and awarded a coveted Fringe Encore slot, while his storytelling performances have been nominated for awards by local website FringeFamous for three years running. He is the co-founder of the Rockstar Storytellers (for which he served as Chair for the two years that position existed) and was founder and producer of the touring theatre troupe Maximum Verbosity.

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You will be able to write a review for this show during the festival.

User reviews

I want to buy pabl a pack of black socks
by Publius McGee
Rating 5 stars
If you ran into him on the street, in his Pacman shirt and lumpy pants, you'd have no idea that phillip low was a veritable word gourmet. He is at his solo best when he's telling stories, painting lovely and horrific images with carefully crafted cadence and deliberate words, his guilty, Catholic soul pervading every breath. He has the voice of a comic, so I wouldn't listen to him read the phone book or a restaurant menu out loud, but I could hear him read his stories every day and die happy.

Point of contention: Rochester is NOT a small town. Geez.

Next year I would like to see a show about what it's like to date phillip low - from the lady's perspective. That'd be Fringey.

Lyrical
by Will Weisert
Rating 5 stars
I've always loved the rhythm and depth of low's work and this performance is no exception. Dark, as always, but accessible if you just follow the flow if the words.

Language over the top!
by Roger Rosvold
Rating 4 stars
Saw this at Fringe for all & it totally lived up to the promise. Well crafted imagery, strong delivery, enjoyable spirit of exploration.

Intense at moments but not overwhelming. I'd see it again if there was time.

Intense and . . . Intense
by Florence Brammer
Rating 4 stars
The musicality and intensity of phillip's storytelling is rich, intense and engrossing. I need to give some more thought to how these stories work together -- and I am assuming they are meant to -- but they are certainly memorably troubling and expertly presented.

Monsters in his brain, & triggery bits
by Fringivitis Vulgaris
Rating 3 stars
PABL is a ferocious wordmonger who brings passion and self-absorption in equal measure. If you sit too close, you WILL get sprayed. In this year's show, he brings his demons, and the spray is bile as well as spittle. He talks about his love for Minneapolis after life in a smaller, more parochial town. He also spins a hideously detailed fictional (??) fantasy of the gruesome, prolonged abuse of a woman by a neighbor man. The fear in the title is not the performer's fear, clearly. Not for kids, not for the easily triggered, and not as good as last year's show.

PABL + whiskey + words
by Heather Baldwin
Rating 5 stars
phil has been one of my favorite writer/performers in the Twin Cities ever since I met him about 2 1/2 years ago. He could probably read from a phone book and I'd pay money to see it, but fortunately, he doesn't. He interweaves several short stories, some funny, some touching, some disturbing, but all brilliantly crafted and presented. My fellow audience members and I were on the edge of our seats, mesmerized.

Awesome
by Derek ""Duck"" Washington
Rating 5 stars
Phillip in my opinion is a mesmorizing storyteller and I'm always excited everytime I get to see some of his original work. I had heard some of the pieces in this performance before but was none the less riveted by his amazing delivery. If you haven't ever seen Phillip tell stories before, this is a great time to start!

A different kind of show.
by Eric Salo
Rating 3 stars
I had the good fortune to catch Phillip's "Descendant of Dragons" back in 2007 and that was more than enough to make me seek him out again in 2012. I don't regret having done so but this show was still disappointing.

The problem for me was that Phillip is so very, very good at his autobiographical monologues that I just found his other material annoying. Not because it was bad or disturbing - he's a talented wordsmith and an effective speaker regardless. I simply wanted to hear more of his personal stories and left hungry for more.

Just Wow
by Mark Long
Rating 5 stars
I have seen phillip a number of times in the last several years, and he is an excellent storyteller. I'm sure I was critical of some of his previous Fringe shows, but this show blew me away.
He has crafted several stories of truth and fiction and delivers them to you with amazing skill. I am impressed. You will be, too.

Go see this.
by Frayed Edge
Rating 5 stars
A handsomely crafted dark monologue interspersed with comfortably delivered short stories.

Not for kids or the very squeamish, but well delivered, directed and written.

Scale:
0-Terrible
1-Tell your friends not to go
2-A bad fringe show, below par for the festival. Don't Bother
3-Worth seeing, don't go out of your way.
4-Good to Great. Make time for this show.
5-Absolutely outstanding. A great show, festival or otherwise.

Nice juxtapositions
by Paul Hogrefe
Rating 4 stars
Dark and disturbing meets funny, back and forth, but very successfully!

A Bit of Everything
by William Marth
Rating 5 stars
Phil takes a break from reinterpreting Arthurian mythology for his previous Fringe shows by giving us a series of short stories. Many are Low at his most conversational, almost standup in a way as he talks about his past, his relationships, and his research. They're refreshing pallate cleansers that bookend an extremely creepy story that's equal parts Thomas Harris, William Gibson, and Lev Grossman and reminds you that you're sitting in a dark room with a lot of empty space behind you and what was that creaking noise?

Highly recommended.

drink this
by Carl Franzen
Rating 5 stars
History finder, story maker, culture maven. Beat poet without a cigarette. Sips a glass of Jamison. Explores the power of the stage.

Balanced, Graphic and entertaining..
by Darren Schaufenbuel
Rating 4 stars
The balance and transition between short story/graphic novel and personal insight was very entertaining. It made it seem like more than a 1 person show.. Plus, I learned something interesting about the performer and the dark history of our state and prominent residents of our state..

Appreciated the Nonfiction and History
by Mark Mikula
Rating 3 stars
phillip andrew bennett low is a talented storyteller who owns the stage, but this was a tale of two shows for me. I really liked the monologist's affection for Minneapolis and was enlightened by the stories he told that were rooted in reality. I wasn't as enthusiastic about the more fictionalized, poetic pieces. This reflects my own personal preference for the real over the fictional though. So take that for what that's worth.

Edgy and engaging
by Laurie Swenson
Rating 5 stars
Phillip is a marvelous storyteller. In this show, he weaves together a diversity of compelling tales, including really engaging personal stories. One segment is particularly edgy and may be troubling to some people to go that far into the darkness of a mind. Phillip tells that story without either glorifying or condemning the violence or darkness. He's just the storyteller. That content made me uncomfortable, but I don't regret seeing the show. It made me think. In fact, I still regard it as a must-see.

A Tange of Hideous Angles
by Paula Nancarrow
Rating 5 stars
phillip’s language in his formal pieces is lush and poetic, and the title of this review is taken from one piece I particularly love listening to. I am still pondering this tale, which fuses Alice in Wonderland with Unicorn mythology and at least one more fairy tale trope about three daughters and their different failures of nerve. One of the joys of Fringe is watching someone you know assemble a show out of pieces that have evolved over the years. The Minneapolis framework does seem a little arbitrary (could we maybe get a different statue of a different Mary to bleed?), but I remain grateful that someone with a keen eye for horror has that eye turned inward, and outward, in ways that demand we acknowledge it.

creative, creepy, frenetic
by David Trudeau
Rating 3 stars
Mr. Low uses his imagination for the bizarre in crisply word smithed stories that get blurred in his one speed motor mouthed delivery. The Jameson bottle is distracting. There is a lot of potential theatricality here, but it languishes at times.

disturbing but good
by Vicki Joan Keck
Rating 4 stars
phillip has a knack for telling a fast paced story and you have to be a very engaged listener to catch it all. One particular story, thankfully told in segments, was terribly disturbing and intense but extremely well told. Luckily he intersperses it with lighter fare. All in all a mesmerizing hour.

Like crawling through a tangle of cables
by William Wilson
Rating 4 stars
It was certainly a verbose show. There were times when he was going a thousand miles an hour and my brain was trying it's best to keep up. He has a naturally delivery though, and the ability to keep me wanting more. I respect a man that can polish a performance so much that there were no note cards...no written notes of any kind. It was a solid show of him standing there pouring his soul out to what for me was an at times confused audience. I was hoping he would have left the Jameson on the stool because after this show I wanted to take some belts myself. Phillip is still above all a MN treasure...and with so many more years to go in his career it will be fun to see where he goes.

Gifted story teller!
by Deb Ann
Rating 5 stars
I thought Phillip was a very gifted story teller! Made me laugh and kept my attention the whole time. Only thing would be is why, out of all the scary content one could talk about, why he chose to talk about fantasizing rape - kind of weirded me out...

Not seeing the Minneapolis theme
by Amy Bonifas
Rating 2 stars
The professed love affair with Minneapolis that proposes to tie this piece together is less specific to Minneapolis and appears more about escaping small towns and small minds.
Unfortunately the fantasy rape scene and friendly misogyny that thread through the production are the only points of cohesion.

Polished
by Kay Kirscht
Rating 5 stars
Multiple Fringes, and literally hundreds of shows have given Phil massive stage presence. Here - he sends up an hour of work I've had the pleasure to see develop over the years. Fable, love, myth, faith and terror dwell here - and you're paying for a profoundly disturbing mix, with a whiskey chaser.

Disjointed
by Matilda ZombieQueen
Rating 2 stars
The show comprises personal monologues and lurid, surreal horror fantasy. There's no obvious thread connecting the pieces and none is compelling enough on its own to hold attention througout.

Also, "Adult Content" doesn't really convey "rape fantasy" and nice guy-based misogyny.

brave, funny, scary, smart
by Kevin McLaughlin
Rating 4 stars
Phillip is at his best in this show. It's engaging, daring material brought to life by a guy with real control, presence and passion. See it!

Mesmerizing
by Dawn Krosnowski
Rating 5 stars
I forgot to breathe.